On Fri 10 Apr 2026 at 12:49:28 (+0200), Rob van der Putten wrote: > On 10/04/2026 04:36, Max Nikulin wrote: > > On 09/04/2026 1:44 pm, Rob van der Putten wrote: > > > So I need to keep track of changes in Debian versions that are > > > not installed on any of my systems. > > > > Am I right that you need notifications about new package versions > > similar to > > <https://tracker.debian.org/news/1714333/accepted- > > asterisk-12282dfsgcs61560671435-1-source-into-unstable/>? > > Perhaps registered users might be able to subscribe to email > > notifications specific to a source package, but there is at least > > public RSS feed with package-related events. I would consider it > > if you need to track just a handful of packages. > > > > > I could not find information about this in any of the man pages. > > > So how do I use apt-listchanges or "apt changelog PKG" to keep > > > track of changes of certain packages in Sid on a Bookworm > > > system? And how do I run this from cron? > > > > Add sid repositories to apt configuration with negative priority > > to prevent updates from it. > > I tested this with 'bookworm-backports' (I still run bookworm), just > to make sure that it would not update anything. Which is exactly what > happens. As one would expect. > The same test with 'sid' however, does want to do an update. Which is > rather unexpected.
You're completely safe from accidental upgrades if you keep a private copy of the APT lists as an ordinary user. For example, on this bullseye system, I can keep a trixie¹ set of lists thus: $ cat /tmp/trixs/sources.list deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ trixie main contrib non-free non-free-firmware deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security trixie-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ trixie-updates main contrib non-free non-free-firmware $ $ apt-get -o Dir::Etc::SourceList=/tmp/trixs/sources.list -o Dir::State::Lists=/tmp/trixl/ update Get:1 http://security.debian.org/debian-security trixie-security InRelease [43.4 kB] Get:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie InRelease [140 kB] [ … ] Get:51 http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates/main all Contents (deb) [27.3 kB] Get:52 http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates/main amd64 Contents (deb) [88.3 kB] 2to3:all/bullseye 3.9.2-3 uptodate acl:amd64/bullseye 2.2.53-10 uptodate [ … ] zstd:amd64/bullseye 1.4.8+dfsg-2.1 uptodate zutils:amd64/bullseye 1.10-1+b2 uptodate Fetched 127 MB in 19s (6684 kB/s) Reading package lists... Done W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied) W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/srcpkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied) $ As you can see from my hackish job here, I get a set of bullseye lists thrown in, and update tries (and fails) to refresh the bullseye caches. There are scads of APT options that could be used to slim the process (while lengthening the command line significantly). They're all shown in /usr/share/doc/apt/examples/configure-index. > > I do not have sid, but the following command works for testing: > > > > apt-get changelog asterisk-core-sounds-en/testing > > > > I posted "apt changelog PKG" in my first reply expecting that it > > should be enough. > > > > > Sending me an email whenever a change occurs. Cron jobs send an email whenever there's output², so you could update silently, and run a script that compares the latest version of your PKGs with the current value, only producing output on a mismatch. Or you could download the changed PKGs into a holding directory, which your cron job lists at the end, similar to how I upgrade my machines all the time: apt-get -qq update && apt-get -qq -d dist-upgrade && find /var/cache/apt/archives/ -name '*deb' I get nagged each time the cron job runs if I haven't yet upgraded and cleaned the cache. ¹ I used trixie because I could check the lists were identical with those on a more up-to-date machine here, and /tmp so I don't have to clean up afterwards. ² Set the MAILTO= in the crontab file to whatever. Cheers, David.
